Bloomsbury's Rabbi

A translator stands between two languages and between the two worlds that the languages represent. If he does his job well, he may belong in neither place. Such was the fate of Samuel Koteliansky, an emigré Russian Jew who translated Chekhov, befriended D.H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield, and circulated on the fringes of the Bloomsbury group.

Bloomsbury Recalled  Quentin Bell,  Columbia University Press.  Bell's memoir of his parents and their friends—Woolf, Forster, Strachey—who made up the dazzling, dated Bloomsbury group.  SAVE

D.H. Lawrence and Kangaroo  George Simmers,  Great War Fiction.  In Lawrence's World War I novel, the "really ugly" character based on Koteliansky was a minor player, much like Kot in Bloomsbury.  SAVE

Leonard Woolf's Complexity  Claire Messud,  New York Times.  Leonard Woolf—"the Jew," to Virginia and her friends—was "noble, engaged, and quietly passionate."  SAVE

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Jerusalem's Ego and Id

Biography is not the same as history. Biography charts the outer and inner life of a person—character, spirit, morality, emotion, perhaps even soul. History, by contrast, incorporates different narratives and pieces of evidence, seeks out new data, then rises above all the fragments with a synthesis.

Montefiore on Montefiore  Todd Leopold,  CNN.  There have been many reactions to Jerusalem: the Biography. Here, the author responds to the challenge put to him and delivers his own verdict on the book.  SAVE

Melisende’s Psalter  British Library.  Like her ancient predecessor, King David, Queen Melisende commissioned artwork for the Book of Psalms. Now preserved at the British Library, it can be seen online.  SAVE

Lord Shaftesbury: God’s Reformer  Marena Fisher,  Yale Standard.  Lord Shaftesbury, the paradigmatic Victorian reformer, dedicated his life to improving the condition of the poor, rehabilitating felons—and restoring the Jews to their homeland.  SAVE

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Among the Literati

Some days, I can't help thinking back 25 years to my high-school French course, which is where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu—the happy medium—and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is the happy medium so elusive? Why do I more often feel caught betwixt and between or, even among my fellow Jewish-American writers, alone?

Liberalism and Literary Criticism  Seth Mandel,  Contentions.  Jewish pro-Israel leftists are viscerally unwanted by their peers, who try desperately to strip figures like Leon Wieseltier and David Grossman of their identities.  SAVE

Occupy Wall Street, Not Palestine  Ben Lorber,  Palestine Chronicle.  The writer complains that as "pro-Palestinian discourse begins to make itself heard" in the OWS movement, "right-wing organizations" are denouncing it as anti-Semitic.  SAVE

Write On for Israel  writeonforisrael.org.  The advocacy journalism program that trains high school students in pro-Israel writing, speaking, and broadcasting.  SAVE

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Freud's Last Session.

The Couch and the Confessional

Sigmund Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism, was published in 1939, a year after  he fled, mortally ill with cancer of the jaw, from Nazi-occupied Vienna to London.  The book is famous for its speculations that Moses was not Jewish and that the people he led out of Egyptian slavery murdered him.   

Armand Nicholi on Freud and Lewis  Charlie Rose.  The author discusses the "striking parallelism" between Freud's and Lewis' ideas and the enduring consequences of both. (Video)  SAVE

Defender of the Faith?  Mark Edmundson,  New York Times.  The critic explains his reasons for concluding that Freud, near the end of his life, began to recognize "the poetry and promise in religion."  SAVE

The Question of God  PBS.  A PBS series inspired by Nicholi's work, including excerpts from Freud's and Lewis' writings, interviews with scholars and thinkers, and a guide for group discussions.  SAVE

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